A Kind Of Magic
by dear cecil
Summary: Merasmus is an out of commission magician. He has heart problems. Jane is a RED Soldier. He's growing too accustomed to normal society. They're roommates. They argue. They do their taxes together. Sometimes they end up kissing.
1. No Mortal Man

This is an alarmingly swift response to the Halloween comic, isn't it? In my defense, this was requested.

* * *

><p>Merasmus glares at the salad set before him, grinding his teeth together. High blood pressure, indeed, he thinks. As if high blood pressure could be a problem for a magician! As if his heart could ever stop beating, when magic flows through it at every second, as surely as the air through his lungs! As if something so trifling as <em>mortality<em> clings to him the way it clings to other humans!

"I can see your veins getting ready to burst from here, Merasmus," Jane says from behind his newspaper. His voice is too rough for his insults to have any elegance.

"Silence," Merasmus snaps, stabbing at a tomato slice viciously. It splits beneath his fork, spilling water and seeds onto the lettuce around it. "I, Merasmus, do not require your health advice!"

Jane glares at him from beneath his helmet, and Merasmus wonders, not for the first time, why his roommate insists on wearing the thing everywhere. If it was as glorious as Merasmus' skull headpiece, then perhaps he could understand, but a dingy helmet that shadows his eyes like a shy schoolgirl's bangs? He curls his lip in disgust, forked tongue pressing against the back of his teeth as he waits for another chance to insult Jane.

"If you die, I'm going to have to find a new roommate," Jane says, laying the newspaper on the table. "You're a terrible one, but if you think I'm going to put out ads for another month and a half, you can think again, buster!" He stands, his chair skidding on the tile behind him, and stomps to the fridge. "You are going to relax, and you are going to take care of your heart, or so help me I will take care of it for you!"

Merasmus shoots up from his seat as well, his chair teetering precariously for a moment before it rights itself with a thunk. "I'll care for _your_ heart, you insufferable prick—"

"I'm not the one with high blood pressure," Jane shouts, "so maybe you ought to just keep your concern to your own damn self!" He grabs the carton of heart healthy orange juice and tears off the cap. "You're shaking like a leaf in a storm; now sit down, you irresponsible conman, or I will shove this carton so far down your throat you will not even have a heart to care for because it will get decimated by my fist!"

Merasmus draws himself up to full height, his ram skull drawing over his face and giving him strength that doesn't seem to extend to his left arm, inexplicably. He stalks to the fridge, ignoring Jane's threatening stance, pokes his finger into the man's chest, and—

chokes on his own breath, pain shooting up his arm and around his chest like sparks, his throat seizing up and making him cough and wheeze pitifully as his prodding turns into clutching at Jane's coat.

The carton of orange juice falls to the ground, and Jane drags him over to the wall, where he phones for an ambulance.

* * *

><p>"Your bedside manner leaves much to be desired," Merasmus sniffs, looking up at Jane with as much dignity as he can muster. It's not a lot, honestly; something about being dressed in hospital scrubs and propped up on pillows that feel like cinder blocks takes an awful lot of fight out of a man. The nurses won't even allow him to wear his ram skull.<p>

"Eat your goddamn salad," Jane says. His helmet is off—the nurses really are sticklers for dress code—and his coat is hung over the back of his chair, with only his white shirt stretching over his muscles, which are intimidating and not at all fascinating. He pushes the bowl closer to Merasmus, and thrusts the fork dangerously close to his eyes.

"After I get my blood pressure medication, and I get home, I am going to put a curse on you," Merasmus says around a mouthful of carrots. "You are going to eat _so much_ cabbage that you are going to _die_, and then you will know how I feel."

Jane rolls his eyes, and pats Merasmus on the arm. His touch most certainly does not send a thrill up Merasmus' spine.

"Whatever you say, magic man."

Merasmus closes his lips around his fork and decides not to kill Jane Doe.

Jane leans back, propping his dirty boots up on the hospital bed, and Merasmus sneers in disgust. Maybe he will kill him, after all.


	2. Challenging the Doors of Time

Suddenly everything is gay, I don't know, I'm sorry. Only I'm not really sorry.

* * *

><p>Jane watches Merasmus from across the living room, frowning. It's been two weeks since Merasmus had a heart attack, and Jane has been watching him like a hawk since then, in part because he Merasmus is too stupid to take care of himself (Jane caught him locked in the basement with God knows what kind of fumes just the other day, and had to drag him out amidst protests about his breathing being <em>just fine and none of his concern<em>), and in part because he just feels like it. And Jane likes doing things that he feels like doing, because he feels like doing things he likes.

It makes more sense in his head.

He closes his heavily annotated copy of _The Art of War_ with a snap when Merasmus' eyes drift to the candy bowl in their living room. It's Halloween tonight, so the candy has to stay, but Jane would sooner undergo water drip torture than he would have to drag his unconscious roommate across the apartment again just because the man can't take care of himself.

"Yes, well," Merasmus says archly, "if anyone needs me, I will be in the basement." He starts to march out of the living room, but when he's in the doorway, Jane speaks up.

"Remember, I'm taking those neighbor kids out for candy tonight," he reminds Merasmus.

"Of course I remember," Merasmus says, and his voice is high enough that Jane is sure he did not remember at all. "And when will you be back?"

"I'll probably bring the kids back by nine, but if I go back to be with my team, I don't know." Jane shrugs.

"Ah. Yes. Team party, yes." Merasmus' shoulders are stiff, and Jane, for the sake of the man's blood pressure, doesn't mention how obvious it is that he forgot that, too.

* * *

><p>Of course the Spy gives children cigarettes and knives for Halloween. Of course the Scout gives them teeth. Of course the Heavy makes them cry, and then pays them off to get them to stop.<p>

Jane sighs. He packs the cigarettes into one pocket and the knife into the other, tosses the tooth into the bushes, and divides the money between the children. They each end up with 2,300 dollars, and he lets them run off to find the other members of his team in the building while he pockets around 30 dollars for himself. He'll probably use it to buy them something special later.

He walks into the foyer so he can have a stiff drink, punch his teammates, and convince himself that rubbing elbows with civilians hasn't made him go a little soft.

* * *

><p>After pouring tobacco into the Spy's drink and explaining to him why children shouldn't be encouraged to smoke, Jane follows the trail the kids blazed, the Heavy's booming laughter fading as he puts more distance between them. The children have left a trail of wrappers behind them that he picks up, and he follows it to the dark end of the building that the Demoman always sulks in on Halloween. The kids are there, huddled together as the Scot spins them some yarn about magical books and eye removal, until he finally says something interesting.<p>

"Merasmus?" Jane asks, pulling off his cardboard robot head. "The only thing that goldbricker's doing at midnight is _not the dishes_!"

And then from the other room, he hears his roommate's voice, and all he can think is goddamnit, he'd better not have a heart attack in public. That would be embarrassing for everyone involved.

* * *

><p>Jane ends up breaking Merasmus' staff in half, and lunging at him outside the building after he summons a gigantic eyeball. The Demoman runs around in drunken hysterics, the Scout screams with glee as he whacks away at the eye with his bat, and the Heavy breaks out his minigun like there aren't three children standing a few feet away who could die at any given moment and who aren't hooked up to Respawn.<p>

The realization just makes him punch Merasmus harder, and the magician blacks out, the eye disappears, and the Engineer comes storming out of the building yelling "what in tarnation," and the party is kind of over.

Jane slings Merasmus over his shoulder and brings the kids home. They're shaken up, and pale, and they cling to him when he says goodbye, insisting they've had the best holiday ever. He grins at them despite the ram horn sticking into his back and ruffles the stocky kid's hair.

* * *

><p>Merasmus wakes up with a groan, and visibly shakes himself out of his stupor. It is not in any way charming, it does not remind Jane of his old dog, and it does not make him want to embrace his roommate. "You knocked me out!"<p>

"You summoned my teammate's possessed eyeball and nearly killed our neighbor's children!"

"You broke my staff!"

"You crashed a party you weren't invited to and then made me carry you home like a drunk kid on prom night!"

"You carried me home!" Merasmus furrows his eyebrows. "Wait, you carried me home?"

"Yes," Jane says, "I carried you home like a doe with a broken leg."

Merasmus shivers. "How degrading," he murmurs. He grabs a piece of candy from the bowl on the table, still full, and unwraps it.

"Don't you dare. If I have to carry you three times, I will tear off your legs, and I will have them replaced with robotic legs that make you walk even when you don't want to. I have the connections, Merasmus; I have the will!" Jane slaps the piece of candy from Merasmus' hands, onto the ground.

Merasmus grabs his coat, his head injury apparently dashing away his sense of self-preservation, and tugs him close. "I am an adult! I can have sugar whenever I want to! It was only a measly little heart attack, Jane; I will summon _millions of eyeballs_ if that is what it takes for you to let me have some sugar!" He pants furiously, and Jane can see how flat his teeth are from grinding them together so often, and on an impulse that even he doesn't understand, he leans forward and kisses his roommate.

It gets Merasmus to shut up, at least, but the rhythm of his pulse when Jane tears his wrist away from his coat if more than a little alarming. "If you have a heart attack again—"

Merasmus bites Jane's lip furiously, and keeps his eyes open as he does it, staring Jane down. It's unnerving and exciting at the same time. "If you think I am going to have a _heart attack_ because you _kissed me_, you are living with a _severely inflated ego_, and you are going to _die_, because no one can be that confident without fate itself conspiring to teach them how ridiculous—"

Jane rolls his eyes, and kisses Merasmus again, because it's actually pretty nice. Something about the forked tongue and the hatred and the claws. They're basically married, anyway; he does their taxes at the same time, for God's sake.

"Don't have a fucking heart attack," Jane orders, and Merasmus gives him the most withering look he ever has, and Jane wakes up the next morning with claw marks down his back and a magician drooling on his shoulder.

He grabs Merasmus' heart medication, in case he has some kind of panic attack when he wakes up, and he thinks that rubbing elbows with civilians and magic men has definitely made him go soft.


End file.
